Removal of toluene using an integrative DBD/Absorption reactor: Feasibility and mechanism

Abstract

This paper proposed a novel hybrid system of dielectric barrier discharge combined with absorption (DBD/Absorption) for toluene removal. In the system the DBD reactor and the absorption device were not simply connected in series but were combined into an integrative reactor. The motivation of this work is to confirm the feasibility of the hybrid system and reveal the mechanism of toluene removal in the DBD/Absorption reactor. The performance of toluene removal using DBD/Absorption, DBD, and DBD+Absorption (series connection) has been compared in terms of removal efficiency (RE). The RE of DBD/Absorption was 95.0% at the initial concentration of 1600 mg/m3 and the gas flow of 1600 mL/min, exceeding DBD and DBD+Absorption by 14.9% and 7.2%, respectively. Significant influence factors on toluene removal, such as input power, initial concentration, and gas flow, have been investigated, too. Compared to DBD and DBD+Absorption, performance of DBD/Absorption for toluene removal was more effective and stable at the higher input power and AC frequency of 8–9 kHz. In energy consumption study, 9 kHz was the best AC frequency condition for toluene removal using DBD/Absorption. Subsequently, DBD/Absorption and DBD+Absorption both could partly inhibit the emission of O3 and CO2. The mechanism and the kinetics of toluene removal using DBD/Absorption was studied.